


i wanna love you (i was born to love)

by devereauxing



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26247754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devereauxing/pseuds/devereauxing
Summary: John’s soulmate died somewhere between 7:30 in the morning and 8:15 at night on the 12th June, 2012.
Relationships: John Deacon/Roger Taylor (future)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	i wanna love you (i was born to love)

So, here’s the thing. 

John didn’t notice. 

When his soulmate died? John didn’t notice. It hadn’t been anything like all the stories he’d heard over the years: the colour didn’t leave his life, his heart didn’t skip a beat, and he didn’t fall to the ground as grief overwhelmed him. He’d gone to school with a soulmate, the words dark against his skin as he’d gotten dressed in the bathroom with steam from the shower curling the hair at the nape of his neck, and come back without one and he hadn’t noticed. He didn’t know when his soulmate died, didn’t have a time that made the breath catch in the back of his throat each day as it passed by agonisingly slow. He’d gone to school with a soulmate, a future, and come back home without one. 

Or, perhaps, he’d still had one when he’d come home. He wasn’t sure. He’d come home and watched TV for a bit, fucked about on his Xbox while ignoring both his math homework and his little sister who insisted on chattering on at him about her day even when he snapped at her that he didn’t _fucking care, Julie, Jesus Christ._ He’d come home and for all he’d known he’d still had a soulmate waiting for him right up until the moment Julie had spilled her milk at dinner, splashing down his school top that he’d been rather hoping to stretch out for another day before washing. He was grateful, later, that she had — it was difficult enough, even after years of the fucking things, to sit amongst his peers in the Deceased Soulmate support groups and admit that, no, he didn’t know when his soulmate had died right down to the bloody second, let alone how difficult it would be to admit he didn’t know the _day_. 

If she hadn't spilled her milk… well. The thing about soulmarks is: you sort of take them for granted. They spill out over your skin for your entire life and they don’t change. They don’t change unless your soulmate dies and when you’re fifteen years old death is a foreign concept. Death is for old people, or sick people, or people in different countries. Death isn’t for you or the people you care about; death isn’t for the person who is meant to be the other half of who you are. The act of obsessively checking your soulmark was considered a symptom of a multitude of mental illnesses and it was frowned upon to actively seek them out — they just were. If Julie hadn't spilled her milk he couldn’t say he would have realised until his shower the next morning. His soulmark sat low on his hip, just below the waistband of his boxers that he usually slept in and… 

John’s soulmate died somewhere between 7:30 in the morning and 8:15 at night on the 12th June, 2012. He was fifteen years old, stood naked in his family bathroom with milk growing tacky on the skin of his belly when he found out. He’d been confused at first. He was pale, so the words usually stood out in dark contrast against his skin: _You’re better than I ever imagined_. 

That was what got him, really. When he sat in the support groups and he talked about his experience. He didn’t have a generic soulmark. He didn’t have one of the Common Marks. There was no ‘ _Hello_ ’ for him; no ‘ _Sorry, do you have the time?’_ or _‘Nice to meet you, I’m_ —” No, John had the soulmark of a fucking fairytale. John had a soulmark just begging to be sold off to a major Hollywood studio and turned into a three part saga about the enduring nature of true, instantaneous love. John had _You’re better than I ever imagined_ and he never got to find out what he would have said to deserve such praise. 

He was pale, so the words usually stood out in dark contrast against his skin but as he peeled himself out of his pants, one hand stuck absently under the spray of the shower to test the water temperature and grumbling under his breath about Julie’s clumsiness, the contrast he was so used to seeing wasn’t there. He’d been confused, staring down at himself, and it had taken him a good thirty seconds to realise what was _wrong_. Staring down at himself, his pants pooled around his ankles and his hand still under the water, he hadn’t understood straight away that his soulmate was dead. The words had gone a dull, dirty colour — grey and purple and blue and not black. The words hadn’t been black because his soulmate had died. 

His first support group, a week later after school at the local YMCA centre, _please, do sit down, we only have an hour before the Alcoholics Anonymous get here_ , had been terrifying. Surrounded by others who had been just like him and yet so fucking different. It was like a strange badge of honour: who had the worst soulmate death. A lady had put her hand up and introduced herself, Suzie, apologising for not being able to stand. She was sorry, she had said, but her soulmate’s death had caused her to pass out as she drove to the shops and she’d be in a cast for another three months. It was unfair, she had said, that she hadn’t died too. 

That was a common theme. 

Suzie passed out from the pain of her soulmate dying and John didn’t even fucking _notice_. 

(“I think, sometimes, about what it would have been like to meet them,” Suzie had said, a wistful smile on her face as she traced an absent minded pattern on her cast. “With words like _God, they take their time_ I just know it would have been so romantic.” 

John had sat opposite her with his eyes darting to the others in their circle, all nodding sympathetically as if her words had been a declaration of love, and wondered if this circle jerk of self pity actually _helped_ anyone.) 

It had been explained to him over the years, so many times that he’d lost count, that he _had_ noticed. He had noticed that his soulmate had died but his brain wouldn’t let him remember to protect him. He had noticed that his soulmate had died but that his brain had waited until he was naked in his bathroom, half covered in milk, to let him come to terms with it. On some days this made more sense than others. On some days John just thought that he had been broken, been _left behind_ , long before his soulmate had died. 

Because the thing was that even when he’d noticed, even when he was sitting in a badly lit YMCA hall surrounded by his grief stricken peers… John hadn’t felt grief for his soulmate. He’d felt confused. He’d felt confused because this wasn’t how his life was supposed to go, how anyone’s life was supposed to go. You had a soulmate and then you found them. You had a soulmate, you found them, and you got married. You had a soulmate who you married and no matter what everything else would work out because you had your soulmate. He’d felt confused because his entire idea of what his future held was built around the idea that he had someone he was fated to spend that future with and all of a sudden he didn’t. 

John was fifteen when his soulmate died. He was fifteen and he didn’t notice. 

John was fifteen when his soulmate died, and sometimes he felt like that was the only thing anyone ever needed to know about him. It was one of the most common ice breakers: so have you met your soulmate yet? He lied, sometimes. Demurred with a shake of his head, eyes on the ground as his new acquaintance eagerly told him about their own soulmate, or attempted to commiserate about how difficult it was to wait for your one. Usually he told the truth in all its ugly glory. 

There were cultures in which the soulmates of the dead were killed once they were left behind, John had learned in school. This was a barbaric practice, his teacher had intoned, praising the civilised nature of the Western world. There were cultures in which the soulmates of the dead were killed once they were left behind, but that was not a practice followed in England. No, in England they merely treated you as if you were already dead. This was supposed to be somehow _better_. 

Usually he told the truth in all its ugly glory and he got to watch his new acquaintance recoil minutely, flinching away from him as if the death of his soulmate was somehow contagious. He got to watch as they stammered out their consolations as if their lukewarm apologies for his sorrow, his pain, his anger would have any effect on him now, years after the fact. He got to watch as the words formed on their lips: “I’ve heard there are support groups and dating sites—” 

And there were. Support groups, of course, past the initial mandatory ones that GP’s were required to send patients to in the event of a soulmate death. The support groups got more bearable as time went on, the leaders referring him to ones filled with people whose experiences aligned better with his own. People who had become jaded by their experiences, who looked at coupled soulmates and wondered: would you have felt it if the other had died before you’d met? There were dating sites as well but John found them horrendously depressing. 

If you were of the left behind, you had two options: your peers, or the soulmated who hadn’t met their one yet. The other left behind tended to be… depressing as all hell. It was an accepted opinion that any relationship post soulmate death was merely settling because you didn’t want to be lonely, and it was expected that any relationship pre soulmate meeting was a placeholder to be abandoned posthaste when the one was met. Neither options appealed to John all that greatly. 

He’d dated, of course. Had a relationship or two which had fizzled out for one reason or another: they hadn’t been able to look past their own faded mark, let alone his; the chemistry simply hadn’t lasted; he’d felt as if he was competing with the ghost of a sentence that had never so much as been spoken. 

(“Well, darling,” his mum had said, spooning another serving of roast potatoes onto his plate as Julie canoodled opposite him with her soulmate. “You can’t afford to be pi— I mean—”) 

* 

**Author's Note:**

> the beginnings of a (kinda) soulmate au that is well and truly planned out and plotted and has been sitting around in my drafts for over a year!!!!!!!
> 
> clearing out my google docs and the lack of motivation that sees my writing never actually eventuate into anything!!!!!!
> 
> @sarinataylor on tumblr etc etc


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